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Overall Conclusions of the United States Independent Counsel Investigating the Iran-Contra Affair:

The investigations and prosecutions have shown that high-ranking Administration officials violated laws and executive orders in the Iran/contra matter.

Independent Counsel concluded that:

  • the sales of arms to Iran contravened United States Government policy and may have violated the Arms Export Control Act;
  • the provision and coordination of support to the contras violated the Boland Amendment ban on aid to military activities in Nicaragua;
  • the policies behind both the Iran and contra operations were fully reviewed and developed at the highest levels of the Reagan Administration;
  • although there was little evidence of National Security Council level knowledge of most of the actual contra-support operations, there was no evidence that any NSC member dissented from the underlying policy keeping the contras alive despite congressional limitations on contra support;
  • the Iran operations were carried out with the knowledge of, among others, President Ronald Reagan, Vice President George Bush, Secretary of State George P. Shultz, Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger, Director of Central Intelligence William J. Casey, and national security advisers Robert C. McFarlane and John M. Poindexter; of these officials, only Weinberger and Shultz dissented from the policy decision, and Weinberger eventually acquiesced by ordering the Department of Defense to provide the necessary arms; and
  • large volumes of highly relevant, contemporaneously created documents were systematically and willfully withheld from investigators by several Reagan Administration officials.
  • following the revelation of these operations in October and November 1986, Reagan Administration officials deliberately deceived the Congress and the public about the level and extent of official knowledge of and support for these operations.
  • In addition, Independent Counsel concluded that the off-the-books nature of the Iran and contra operations gave line-level personnel the opportunity to commit money crimes.

    • sk9sniff

    An estimated 40,000 Nicaraguans died in the Contra war, sponsored over a decade of international State terrorism by the United States, which refused acknowledgement of jurisdiction of the International Court of Law at The Hague, and has refused to pay the approximately 20 billion dollars owed in indemnities awarded by the Court.